


Independent Variable

by cobalamincosel



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical School, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 05:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20861012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cobalamincosel/pseuds/cobalamincosel
Summary: The only way to get through the biggest, most difficult exam of your life is to go through it with your best friend.At least, that's what Sicheng figures when Jaehyun moves in with him while they prepare for the United States Medical Licensing Examination.





	Independent Variable

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> I had started writing this in the middle of my board review. This is truly a work in progress as I too begin to prepare for my own steps. I ask for patience with this one as it's possibly one of my most personal pieces so far. :)
> 
> Caveat: I don't know what med school in the USA is like, so my bases for the references to med school are from where I studied.
> 
> My love and thanks to Jen, who I had sent the first snippet of this to while we both cried over our respective professions.

The radio silence doesn’t bother Jaehyun at first. 

He thinks that maybe it’s one of those things where Sicheng just needs space again. He knows that sometimes it’s tricky, dealing with him. They get along almost completely except for when they don’t, and that usually entails Sicheng pulling away, and Jaehyun having to just fucking deal with it. 

By all accounts, it’s not great. It isn’t very healthy. But Jaehyun does his express best to be understanding, to try to handle Sicheng with care while not putting on kid gloves because he knows that Sicheng would resent him more if he did. 

(Jaehyun tries to ignore the other part of him that wants to put on a different set of gloves altogether— the kind used for boxing, if only to bust through Sicheng’s walls, his defences, shake him up. Make Sicheng talk to him.) 

But as always, all Jaehyun can do at the moment is to carry on as he has, and leave Sicheng be. He’ll come around, whatever it is. 

Jaehyun doesn’t expect it to stretch on for more than a couple of days. The last time they’d gone this long without speaking to each other was in second year when Jaehyun had made the mistake of bailing on Sicheng after he'd agreed to watch a concert together. Sicheng had purchased tickets and everything, and Jaehyun had completely forgotten. 

The unanswered texts begin to mount, as does his worry. 

It’s how he finds himself at Sicheng’s apartment door on a Friday night when he should be back in his own apartment worrying about his own shit, his own unread Pathoma tucked into the backpack he haphazardly grabbed on the way out.

He knocks, not knowing what to expect but hoping that Sicheng answers the door anyway. It takes a couple of seconds. Wills himself to be patient. He knocks again. 

The door is wrenched open, and Sicheng is there, grey hoodie on. There’s a stain on the hem of it, coffee that had clearly been spilled and had dried and then forgotten. 

“Oh my god, why are you here?” Sicheng asks, and Jaehyun takes in the bags under his eyes, how dry Sicheng’s hair looks, a remnant of his decision to bleach his entire head blonde after he and Yuta broke up, and then cover it up with jet black after he and Yuta had reconciled. 

“I haven’t heard from you in a week,” Jaehyun says. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

The edges around Sicheng’s eyes soften, and where he was stood upright just moments prior, he is now hunched over, making Jaehyun look a good head taller than him. 

“Fuck,” Sicheng says. “Come in.” 

The place isn’t dirty, but it’s messy in a way that feels too much like a reflection of Sicheng’s inner peace, or lack thereof, and it makes Jaehyun worry all the more. 

He finds a spot on the table in the tiny space Sicheng calls a kitchen, and sets the paper bag with takeaway on it.

“When’s the last time you had a decent meal?” Jaehyun asks. Sicheng is sitting at his desk. There are highlighters strewn across the tabletop. Sicheng appears to be halfway through drawing the Pentose-Phosphate Shunt when he turns to face his houseguest. 

“What would your definition of a ‘decent meal’ be, Jaehyun?” Sicheng deadpans. “At the end of the day we are all just a series of glycolytic steps anyway. I’ve had carbs. I’ve synthesised fat. I’ve stored it away. If I don’t eat, my body will handle that problem for me.” 

Jaehyun stares at him. 

“Okay, so I’m gonna take that to mean you haven’t eaten properly since the weekend, then,” Jaehyun says. He pulls the little boxes out of the bag. There’s fluffy white rice and beef with broccoli and some sweet and sour fish. 

Sicheng goes back to sketching, arrows straight, arrows curving all over the page. 

“Have you done nothing but biochem this week?” Jaehyun asks, concerned. 

“Nah, I did pathology,” Sicheng replies, the pencil clattering on the wooden table as he sets it aside. Sicheng sighs. 

It’s quiet for a while as Jaehyun sets up the paper plates, and gets up to check the contents of Sicheng’s refrigerator, He normally would have pulled out Sicheng’s dishes, but he can see the three plates Sicheng owns just sitting in the sink. Jaehyun doesn’t want to ask when he used them last. 

It’s when they’re settling at the small square table that serves as Sicheng’s dining table that he speaks up. 

“I’m sorry I made you worry,” Sicheng says, his expression pinched. 

Jaehyun waves his apology off. 

“I know how you get,” Jaehyun says, chewing on a particularly tough piece of meat. “You’re good, I got you.” 

Sicheng ducks his head at this, his face flaring red. Jaehyun misses it. Sicheng is grateful.

"I'm not," Sicheng says. "I'm actually not good."

Jaehyun pauses mid-chew. Sicheng usually doesn't open up this easily. Most times, Sicheng will down three bottles of soju before even giving him an inch to work with. Jaehyun frowns. 

"What do you mean?"

Sicheng has barely touched his food. 

"I don't think me living on my own right now in the middle of review is doing me any good," Sicheng says. "I wake up, hate myself, study, hate myself, go to sleep hating myself, and wake up doing it all over again."

This is part of the territory, Jaehyun figures. There's not much he can do in terms of helping Sicheng battle shit out with himself, but there's plenty he can do to make sure the voice he's got in his head have voices outside of it too if only to interrupt the endless stream. 

Jaehyun looks around the small apartment: the bunk bed tucked into the corner, the couch that's barely recognizable because it's got ring bound notes and clothing strewn all over it, with just a small sliver of space where Sicheng has clearly moved some of the stuff around to get some place to sit. The entire room tells Jaehyun one thing: I am in a lot of pain but I can't articulate it.

He asks what Sicheng is too timid, too hesitant to.

"Do you think you'd have space for a roommate?" 

Sicheng looks up at him, thin lips even thinner when Sicheng bites down on his tongue. 

"Yeah, I mean it's a mess but this is really meant to be a two-person dorm room," Sicheng replies, a hopeful lilt in his voice masked by the sip of water he takes after responding. 

“How would you feel about me moving in for a bit? Or least staying over a little more often?”

The question hangs in the air held on a string as tight as Sicheng’s shoulder appear, until he exhales and says, “I’d really, really appreciate it, Jae.”

Jaehyun nods once, and picks his chopsticks back up. “Do you want to keep talking about what’s bothering you?” 

Sicheng follows suit, and reaches for the fish. 

“Not right now, if that’s okay,” Sicheng says. 

Jaehyun just nods, and says, “Okay, cool.” 

They’re silent for the most part after that, but it isn't awkward or difficult. 

-

Dong Sicheng and Jung Jaehyun meet by chance, which is how most first encounters go anyway. It happens in the coffee shop on campus, two days before the first anatomy long exam is set to take place.

Qups and Quarters is filled to the brim with students, and while this would normally drive Sicheng away, there’s no denying how good the coffee is here, and the baristas all already know his name. There’s a tall table carved out of wood that most of the students prefer since it’s the one with the outlets under it, and everyone’s got their laptops out, save for this one student hunched over his Netter’s Anatomy that’s perched precariously on his bookstand. There’s also an empty seat next to him. 

Sicheng approaches, figures that he knows of the guy enough to know they both take anatomy together, and says, “Hey, is someone sitting here?” 

The guy has lilac hair and soft eyes and Sicheng thinks, “He looks like mochi,” before the guy says, “Oh, hey, yeah, sure, you can take this, let me just--” and he makes room for Sicheng on the corner of the table, stacking his notebooks and pulling them closer to him. 

“Thanks,” Sicheng replies, and pulls his own Netter’s out along with his bookstand, a baby blue version of the purple one his seatmate has. 

There isn’t much left to say after that, but Sicheng can’t help but glance over at the guy’s notes that don’t seem to have much order about them. He also keeps muttering to himself, holding his hand out and flexing and extending his fingers, whispering “extensor pollicis longus” and “median nerve” and “claw hand” intermittently. 

See, the human anatomy goes well beyond what’s visible. It is a complex system of drains and passageways, pulleys and balls and sockets and tension. A feat of engineering. Muscles that insert into bone, electric currents from the precentral gyrus that tells your spine that tells your arm that tells your fingers to move. But the problem is that there is just so, so much you need to know. There is so much you’re expected to cover. Sicheng feels like he’s drowning because he’s only just mastered the brachial plexus, but it seems like this guy next to him is only just beginning to understand how it works. It’s kind of painful to watch. 

Sicheng pulls his Airpods out, slips them back into their case and checks for the little green light to turn orange, before turning to the guy next to him and saying, “Hey, I’m Dong Sicheng.”

Lilac boy looks up in surprise, hand face down, other hand hovering over the drawing Netter did of the dorsal side, and says, “Oh! Hi, I’m Jung Jaehyun.”

It’s a tight space, so there’s no handshake, but Sicheng doesn’t mind. 

“Anatomy, huh?” 

Jaehyun exhales, and rubs both his eyes with his knuckles. 

“I’m just so fucking bad at it, man,” Jaehyun says. “I was a chem major, I hate this gross anatomy shit. I’d take histology any day but the exam is only gonna be 40% histo.”

Sicheng can’t help but laugh. He was a physical therapy major. Anatomy is all he’s got, he feels. 

“Look, I-- I mean I don’t mean to be presumptuous but would you like some like, mnemonics?”

Sicheng has no idea why he is offering. He isn’t here to make friends. He’s here to get a fucking medical degree. He also knows that if someone had offered it to him, he would be beyond mortified. Help is not something he asks for. Help is not something he wishes someone would extend to him. If he can’t do it on his own, what is the point of attending lectures then? 

But Jaehyun’s eyes light up, a little manic, a little bright, and he’s turning to Sicheng with relief palpable in his shoulders. 

“You’d be saving my ass for real, man,” Jaehyun says, and Sicheng nods, pulling out his own neat flashcards from his bag.

They end up closing the store hours later at 12:37am, and Yuta, the barista who handles the night shift, is coming over to them, the only two remaining in the cafe. 

“Yo, I’m gonna have to kick you guys out, I’m sorry,” Yuta says, wiping down the polished wood of the table they’re sat at. 

“No, it’s cool, sorry we’ve taken up the space all day,” Jaehyun, says, collapsing his book stand and slipping his loose notes into his ring binder. There’s ink on the ulnar side of his hand, Sicheng notes, some smudges from the fountain pen he’d used for the mnemonics Sicheng had taught him. 

“You guys spent more between the two of you than half the people who came in here today,” Yuta laughs, tucking the washcloth into a pocket on his apron. “You’re good, don’t worry.”

When they step out into the street, backpacks slung over their shoulders, Jaehyun bounces on the balls of his feet. 

“Hey so, this was really good,” Jaehyun says, and he’s breathless for a reason he can’t name. “Would you mind if we maybe did that again tomorrow? We don’t have to meet here, the library is much more quiet really, if we can get a seat early enough. What do you say?” 

Sicheng considers it. He’d never studied in groups or with a partner, not when he was in pre-med. This isn’t really his thing, but Jaehyun isn’t noisy per se, and to his surprise, teaching Jaehyun had actually been much more beneficial to him than he’d expected or realised. Sicheng looks at the ground, and looks up at Jaehyun, a bit wary because he isn’t supposed to lose his focus on anything, especially not this early on in the game, but it’s hard to resist the tug that Jaehyun’s eager, dimpled smile causes somewhere in his gut, sort of like the universe telling him this is a pivotal moment, that he should say yes. 

So Sicheng nods. 

“Here’s my number so we can coordinate where to meet up,” Sicheng says, pulling his phone out and unlocking it. 

“Yeah? Okay! Okay, wonderful,” Jaehyun says, pulling his own phone out and handing it to Sicheng so he can key his number in.

This is Day One. 

-

The move into Sicheng’s apartment happens without any fanfare. Jaehyun arrives at Sicheng’s door in with a duffel bag, two pillows, his turtle plushie, and his Nespresso machine, which Sicheng stares at in disgust for five minutes despite Jaehyun telling him over and over that he recycles the pods. 

Sicheng’s apartment looks like it had 180ed from the previous night. All his books and bound sample exams are neatly stacked on his desk. The couch is covered with a massive black comforter, which he and Jaehyun had purchased in a store on a discount about three years back. The bottom bunk of Sicheng’s bed, which he’d been using for storage, now has a mattress and new yellow sheets and a single pillow that he’d spared for Jaehyun. All the dishes are sitting neatly in the drying rack. 

“Did you clean up for little old me?” Jaehyun says, laughing, batting his eyelashes at Sicheng who rolls his eyes and throws his pencil at them.

“Hey, hold up, no throwing of pencils! You know they scare me!” Jaehyun says, holding his arms up and shielding his face. 

“Shut up, make yourself at home, etcetera,” Sicheng says, and settles in his seat in front of the desk. 

Jaehyun can tell that Sicheng is a bit anxious, which is understandable. They’ve been friends for nearly three years, but in all the time he’s known Sicheng, Jaehyun has only ever really slept over at his place once or twice, and those were the rare occasions that Sicheng was willing to host a pizza night at his place. He has never lived with anyone else, and Jaehyun figures he’s worried what sharing a space with someone long-term might mean. 

“Hey,” Jaehyun says, making Sicheng turn to face him. “You sure you’re cool with me being here?”

Sicheng swallows. 

“I didn’t-- I didn’t know how to ask,” Sicheng says, voice small. “I’ve never been good at asking for anything, so--”

“You’re my best friend, Winko,” Jaehyun says. “Whatever it is that seems difficult to ask anyone else, I hope you know that it’s safe with me.”

_You’re safe with me_, Jaehyun thinks. He’s careful not to say that bit out loud.

  
  



End file.
